Histopathologic examination refers to the morphological examination with a microscope of tissue obtained through surgery or physiological examination or an organ obtained through pathological anatomy, and is particularly used in diagnosis of benignancy or malignancy of a tumor, a primary lesion and a metastasis lesion, the presence of effects of a carcinostatic agent or radiotherapy, the presence of an inflammatory lesion, the degree of cell metamorphosis, malformation, and the like.
Such histopathologic examination is performed through a series of processes of collecting detached cells, attaching a target cell to be examined to a glass slide through fine needle aspiration or smearing, fixing and dyeing to prevent deformation, and microscopic examination by a pathologist.
That is, for histopathologic examination, it is necessary to perform an operation of smearing cells to be examined onto a glass slide. However, conventionally, since such operation is manually carried out by an operator, there are problems such as a long operation time, exposure to foreign matter and contaminants during operation, and non-uniform smearing of cells onto the glass slide. Particularly, when cells are non-uniformly smeared onto the glass slide, only cells on the uppermost layer among the cells overlapping each other can be observed through microscopic examination, thereby making it difficult to find a malignant cell which can be present at a lower side of the cells overlapping each other.